Flight Of The Anasazi
By David Billiot
Mark was in his room alone. He was always alone. He sat on his bunk and looked on his phone at the pictures of a date he’d gone on with a female officer named Patricia. He’d taken her on three dates but the one by the pond feeding the ducks was his favorite memory of her. He wondered about calling her. But for what? To say what? To do what?
He looked out the window at the planet slowly rotating in the distance while it was in view. After a moment the spin of the station which provided the feeling of gravity caused the world to seem to move out of frame. All those people on that planet and Mark was up here in space alone.
It was a very odd thing to explain. Mark sort of knew if he said it out loud it would sound odd and label him as weird. He had this idea of Patricia just being there, in his life. Like he didn’t really want her to do anything special or say anything special. What if she was just right there, sitting next to him. Nothing special, just present. But that wasn’t how dating worked and Mark wasn’t good at dating.
The meeting that Mark had been preparing for was set for 16:00. Mark arrived early and instead of having to wait he was told to go right in to the commander’s office. Cmdr Freedman asked Mark to sit and then the commander himself closed the door and even locked it. The sound of the vent high up on the wall by the ceiling was scratching the air as the commander went back to this desk. The commander didn’t seem like himself. He seemed slow and lethargic.
“Sir, am I in some kind of trouble?” Mark asked.
“There’s trouble, but not because of you.” the commander said. The senior officer rounded his desk and then pointed at a set of documents. “Read that. Every word. Don’t you say a word to me until you’ve done it.”
Mark took the documents. It listed the topics and level of access. It then went into detail itemizing the penalties. Mark felt a bit concerned. He was a second lieutenant now and already had some security clearance. However, the level indicated by the documents was for the kinds of things that only the president and admirals knew about. Mark did as ordered and then signaled that he was done reading.
“You see where the pen is.” the commander said, still tense and watching Mark almost without blinking.
“Yes, sir.” Mark said as he took it and signed the documents. The commander received them and then seemed to relax a bit in his chair.
The commander reached into a drawer in his desk and took out two glasses and a bottle of some kind of alcohol. He poured two and then offered a glass to Mark.
“Please don’t take any offense, sir, but I don’t drink.” Mark said.
“I know.” the commander said as he himself drank and then loudly brought the thick bottom of the glass down on his desk. The sound startled Mark for a moment and he considered reaching for the liquid.
“Daniel didn’t die on a test flight.” Cmdr Freedman announced.
“Excuse me, sir.” Mark responded.
The folder was taken out and offered to Mark to look over.
“It was a stupid accident. Big heavy piece of machinery was on rollers.”
“Rollers?” Mark questioned.
The commander nodded. “In the hangar they were working in some of the equipment had to be moved around on rollers.”
“In space?”
“Read the report. He got crushed and couldn’t breathe. At least it wasn’t bloody. There’s that much. Daniel got caught between a wall and a piece of machinery and the gravitational field moved.”
“Gravitational field?” Mark repeated with disbelief in his voice.
“New engine. Does funny things.” the commander offered as explanation. “You’re a good pilot, Mark, but not my best. You know that.”
“I’m trying to do better.” Mark responded.
“I originally said no when they came to offer me this mission. This new engine does things that I can’t understand and even the men who made it argue about how it works. I don’t think they actually know.”
“How can we have a test flight for an engine if we don’t know how it works?” Mark asked.
“That’s what I said. I was not going to have any of you boys do it. But Daniel volunteered. That got the ball rolling and now other people are involved. I said it was too dangerous and now we’re a man down before the flight even happens.”
Mark was quickly looking over the information in the folder so he could contribute productively to the meeting. “What happened during this autonomous flight?”
“Oh, that. There were two. Lost both of them.”
“System failure? I don’t see a reason here.”
“We don’t know the reason.” the commander said.
Mark looked up and waited for more of an explanation.
The commander continued, “They hit ignition and the ships just vanished. Poof. Gone like a magic trick.”
“To where? What was the flight plan?”
“The ships start from the plasma extractor and were set to fly to Memory Station. They never made it. Systems start up and then the ship is gone. It’s just gone. Not there anymore.”
“Twice?”
“Twice. They said they needed a real pilot, a human who could out think the machine, but I said no way. But Daniel heard about it and volunteered. Now we have to send someone. It’s an order.”
“And you choose me.”
“I’m not ordering you. You can refuse.”
“I’d like to know more to help me make a decision.”
“You got clearance to look at everything.”
“Did the ships explode?”
“No, Mark. They just weren’t there anymore. Like they went into another dimension. They’re gone. They’re just gone.”
“Sir, I still don’t understand what you mean by gravitational field. Where is the hangar?”
“Mark, put that aside. I want you to understand why I chose you. No family. No parents. Hell, from what I know you don’t even have any friends. You’re polite and cordial with everyone. You hold doors open and let others go in front of you. And you’re a good pilot. You’re having a good career. But those other guys. They’re pilots too but they’re more than just pilots. They’re husbands. Fathers. Brothers. Friends. You’re always alone.”
“People excel in one part and struggle in another. That’s life.” Mark offered.
“I personally feel the risks are too high. This isn’t wartime. This is not the mission to go hot in the saddle. I am ordered to offer this mission to someone but you are not ordered to take it. Your life has value.”
“How soon do you want an answer?”
“Well, alright. Don’t answer me today. I want you to thoroughly study that flight plan before you even think of saying yes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I want you to know everything about that ship. I am not sending you out to the deep space observatory unless you can fix everything on that ship yourself if it quits on you halfway.”
“The deep space observatory? Sir, that’s in the Kuiper belt. It takes a minimum of two years to get out there. That’s not a test flight, that’s a reassignment.”
“Mark, if that ship can do what they say it can do, you’re going to get there in an hour.”
The words entered Mark’s ears and his mind was working out the implications. “But that’s faster than …”
The commander nodded.
…
It wasn’t exactly the case that Mark had been on the fence. He was 100% a go on the mission. There had been eight autonomous ships built but after the first two were lost that part of the project was scrapped. Six new ships designed for human pilots were commissioned to be built and tested. Mark and three other pilots were each assigned to four of the ships that were built in the inner system. Mark was to take the first flight and the next three would only happen if Mark didn’t just disappear. There were also two additional ships that had already been sent via normal propulsion all the way out to the deep space observatory in the Kuiper belt. Mark’s mission was to fly one ship out to the station and then take a fresh ship back home. He knew every part of the ship, could take it apart and put it back together. The ship, which the engineers named the Anasazi allegedly to honor Mark’s ancestry, handled well with the normal engines. But the test flight wasn’t for the normal engines. The test flight was to test the new special engine that had a completely separate housing compartment for it. Weeks of preparation and study meant he knew everything about the ship, with the one small exception of that special engine.
The twin of the Anasazi was the Earhart which was already at the observatory waiting for Mark. It was deliberately designed to be exactly like the Anasazi down to the millimeter.
Mark had leave before the actual flight and he met up with Patricia. Mark couldn’t tell her about the mission or even hint at it. Top secret meant top secret. But he did have a question for her. He sort of already expected her answer but he had to ask the question anyway.
“I’m just not ready for that.” she had answered him. And that was all Mark needed to hear to be 100% sure he hadn’t left anything on the table. He was doing something important. The new engine in the Anasazi would revolutionize transport. Instead of it taking months or years to get from station to station it could be minutes. The leap forward was too much of a benefit to refuse to try.
Mark looked down at Florida from space one last time and wondered if it would be his last. Then the shuttle taking him to Scorpion station near the sun started to move and he watched the planet until it was no longer in view.
The plasma extractors were these huge structures in orbit around the sun. The plasma extractors were the source of energy that fueled human civilization in space. They pulled magnetically charged material from the sun and then fused it into the various elements humanity needed while also producing a massive amount of energy. The special fuel for the new engine to be tested could only be synthesized at a plasma extractor.
In a special top secret hangar built especially for the Anasazi the special craft waited for Mark. Over the course of three days there were several more rounds of checks. Mark was busy but they did pull him aside to speak with the president and get a pep talk.
When it was time for the flight Mark had these jitters. It felt like a new day. Like the first time he took a bus to go across state when he was in high school. This was big. Bigger than the first time he’d gone up to space.
He got to the ship early and members of the crew were still doing checks and running hoses. Mark was already in his flight suit as he watched. He got out his gloves and started to pull them onto his hands. And then just as the gloves were on he felt a bit of an itch by his nose and regretted having his gloves on at that exact moment.
“Sir, we’re two hours away from countdown. You can enter the cockpit when you’re ready.” a crewman told Mark.
Mark wasted no time. He went with confidence and took his place. It was the best place to spend that time. He had his own checks to perform. One small personal matter to do before getting to that though was securing two items to a place where they wouldn’t cause trouble. The first was a small toy made from small plastic interlocking bricks that had been put together to resemble the moon lander. The other was a photo of all the test pilots posing together. The toy had been built by Clark and the photo was the only one Mark had that included Daniel.
Finally the time for the flight got underway. Mark would have been happy to use the normal engines to get to the designated starting point but instead the Anasazi was towed there to conserve as much fuel in the test vehicle as possible.
Mark closed his eyes as he heard the different officers overseeing the mission report that their section was a go.
“Medical?”
“Go, flight.”
“Life support?”
“Go, flight.”
“Fuel?”
“Go, flight.”
Finally the question was put to Mark.
“Anasazi is a Go, flight.”
“T minus twenty seconds.”
Mark waited and there wasn’t much for him to do. The actual ignition of the systems was going to be handled remotely.
“Three.”
Mark swallowed.
“Two.”
Mark held on.
“One.”
Mark suddenly wondered where in his field of view was home. He remembered looking down on Florida and again wondered if he’d ever see her again.
“Ignition.”
Boom.
The ship lurched forward but Mark wasn’t really feeling himself be pushed from the back. Instead he had the sensation of being upside down. And it wasn’t just a sensation. His helmet felt like but for the straps and locks connecting it to the rest of his suit it would fall off towards the ceiling.
The view from the front view glass was all white. There were no features that Mark could make out at all. Mark felt sluggish and heavy as he tried to move his body and turn his head. Behind the ship there was just black. No stars or even light from the sun. It was just black.
Mark had been in low visibility situations before. That’s when you trust your instruments. In this case the instruments seemed to be showing what Mark would expect to see so that was a plus. The heaviness of his body was uncomfortable but not unmanageable. He really felt like he wanted to roll the ship because he felt like he was flying upside down in a planet’s gravity. But if he really was going faster than the speed of light who knows what rolling a ship would do.
He had an hour of this. He remembered back to the planning stage of the mission and the arguments made about why the test flight needed to go such a considerable distance. They had to prove that it worked by over proving it. While going FTL Mark was in a communications blackout. No message from behind him could reach him. Any message he sent to the deep space observatory would arrive after he was already there.
Mark had drilled and drilled and drilled for this moment. Go over the checklist, monitor the instruments, make notes of observations, be aware of danger. This would be easier if all the blood wasn’t going into his head.
The Anasazi wasn’t built like a lot of other space crafts that Mark had test flown or that were in actual use. In general a vehicle for atmosphere was only for atmosphere and a vehicle for space was only for space. The environment the craft was meant to be used in dictated a lot of the design. Even with abundant resources the best designs were often still the ones that didn’t waste material. But the Anasazi was special. It had to be top secret so it was built in such a way as to make it impossible from the silhouette to determine how the craft would be used. It was built to be highly maneuverable in both vacuum and atmosphere. If anyone without clearance asked about it the official story was that it was a new VTOL design. But most likely the Anasazi would never see atmospheric flight. Unless this FTL flight somehow went off course and plunged Mark through a gas giant.
An alarm started to go off. Mark’s eyes immediately went to it. This was minute 43 of the FTL burn. The total burn time for the FTL engine was supposed to be 57 minutes. The FTL engine was flirting with an overheat. It was riding just under the line that would cause the alarm but it was the first of four alarm stages. The first alarm stage was still well within what was predicted as normal, just higher than the official specs expected for the mission.
Outside the window Mark observed vibrant blue and purple electrical arcs flashing like lightning. Then the ship started to bounce and bump like it was an old bicycle going over a cobble stone road. The sense of gravity that Mark had pulling him towards the ceiling moved. It was still above him slightly but tilted to be to the front right. So Mark felt himself being pressed onto his right arm and pulled out of his seat.
“I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.”
The second warning for the FTL’s heat went off. Ok. Now Mark was getting concerned as he adjusted his body for the new gravity situation. Then just as he was getting used to the gravity pulling him to the front right the gravity rolled around the ship and pulled him to the left like he was in a car making a right turn. Inside of Mark’s mind somehow the gravity was even strong enough to trick Mark into momentarily believing that the left side of the ship was the floor and that the ship had tipped over to its side.
Mark wrestled with the straps and had to lean up to get a better look at the instruments. Flash. There were more electrical arcs happening outside of the ship. They would likely look brilliant in the dark but the big white spotlight directly in front of the ship was shining in light filling the cockpit with illumination.
The hydrogen tank for the fuel cell started to read a temperature increase. It wasn’t sounding an alarm yet but Mark was watching it. 51 minutes. Come on. Let’s cross the finish line.
And the gravity started to act up again. It was at least angled behind Mark now but it kept going back and forth between back and to the upper left and back and to the lower right. Mark felt like he was on a gimbal in a rocket trying to get into orbit.
At 56 minutes the third alarm for the heat in the FTL went off. That meant legitimate danger territory.
“I’m calling it.” Mark said. He started the procedure to shut down the FTL and return control of the ship back to the normal engines. He just really hoped when this thing turned off it didn’t splatter him into atoms. The fate of the two lost autonomous ships came to his mind. Still it was unknown what had happened to them.
The FTL started to make this whirling sound. The bright white light in front of the ship dimmed. Mark felt the sluggishness of his body ease up and it let him breathe a bit easier. A vibration went through the ship and then suddenly it was gone. The white light in front of the ship was completely replaced with the dark of space. The little lunar lander toy Mark had in the cockpit with him began to float. Mark might have taken notice of it except for the fact that just at that exact moment all the instruments went dead. The Anasazi had lost power, and to use a phrase, was dead in the water.
Mark didn’t panic. Step one was to get the main system back on but if that failed the Anasazi had two redundant backup systems. It was even possible to use these ingenious connector switches to sort of mix and match components from system to system so that in total there was enough to get the craft going. The situation was bad only if Mark didn’t right the ship. As things would turn out the main system had no problem coming back online once it went through the reboot sequence. And that was not a second too soon either because as soon as the main system was back online the heat for both the hydrogen tank and the heat for the now deactivated FTL engine were both triggering alarms.
As much as Mark might have wanted to address both of those, the automatic systems seemed to be handling it. There was a downward trend to both of them. The real concern for Mark was that his instruments were telling him that he had not stopped. He was not in orbit in the Kuiper belt. He was nowhere near the deep space observatory. He had passed right by them and was now on his way out of the system at 92 percent the speed of light.
“Well, I’m dead.” Mark uttered without watching his words. Mark did not have to do any complex calculations to come to that conclusion. For one, the normal engines on the ship didn’t have nearly enough power to even come close to breaking from that speed. Even if they could, the Anasazi didn’t have nearly enough fuel. And even if it did, the forces involved would kill Mark.
“Ok, Mark.” he said to himself. “Options.”
His eyes panned over all the instruments. Even in that moment of thinking about his own situation a thought came to him. He now had solved the mystery of the two autonomous ships. He laughed.
Then another thought came to him. Test pilots are issued pills they can take if they are in a situation and it is actually hopeless. Mark carried them because they were issued to him but he would never use them. Mark had gotten into the habit of going to church way back in elementary school when Clark’s family had invited him to come along. Eventually Mark had found that he didn’t believe in what was preached at that particular church but he did believe. He’d read the scriptures and a lot of it came off as obviously mythology and so people who didn’t believe could use that to discredit the whole idea of religion. But Mark had a different way of thinking of it. Each little part of the scriptures were written by a different person at a different time with each trying to pass on to the next generations what wisdom they had. And Mark believed. So no, those pills he had to carry would not be used, at least not for their intended purpose.
Mark dictated a message for flight command explaining his situation but he knew they couldn’t help him. By the time they would get his message and send a reply Mark would be too far away for it to matter. At the present time Mark was already too far away for rescue even if he could stop.
“Ok, wait. Wait a second.” he said. He was watching the heat on the FTL engine go down and then had a thought. Unlike the normal engines the FTL, at least configured the way it was on the Anasazi, could only go in one direction. It had no reverse. “I’m in space. I’ll turn the ship around.”
Turning the ship was easier said than done. The Anasazi did not feel like it wanted to turn. The relativistic speed of the ship meant it handled differently and resisted changes in motion. The metal of the ship made cracking and squeaking noises as it struggled under the strain. “That does not sound good.” Mark said. He continued the maneuver and the best he could think to do was point the front of the ship at the sun. It had been less than ten minutes since he came out of FTL. He didn’t know exactly where the deep space observatory was but it couldn’t be that far. It was in that space between the Anasazi and the sun.
A fear started to creep into Mark as he thought of his plan. Why had the Anasazi lost power when coming out of FTL? He didn’t know. His life depended on being able to slow down but he didn’t know why the FTL hadn’t brought him to a more normal speed. It had shut down almost as soon as it came out of FTL. Or maybe even before and without anything maintaining the FTL the ship just naturally went down to subluminal speed. If he started this would he be trapped in an endless cycle of having to restore power and flip the ship over and over again? It didn’t sound like the ship’s frame would be too happy with that. As it was even though he wanted to be pointing at the sun the ship had taken it upon itself to conserve angular momentum from the turn and drift like it was in a slow spin.
Mark took a moment to set up some timers. He didn’t want to have to manually do this if the FTL was being wonky with the weird gravity he felt. That thing was so unpredictable. He wasn’t going to run the FTL for another hour, or even minutes. He was going to run it for seconds and he wasn’t going to wait to figure out what was going on once he fell out of FTL. He set the path for the secondary system to boot onto a switch right by his left hand. That secondary system was on a timer to boot but if the FTL made the timer stop working because of loss of power then he could boot it manually with just the motion of his thumb.
He had to remember that he wasn’t trying to get to full FTL flight. If he saw that bright white light then this was over. He had to stay under that. So how many seconds did it take to get to that? He looked at the heat of the hydrogen tank. That looked good. He looked at the heat of the FTL. It was still higher than what Mark would like but it was under the level needed for the first alarm.
“Let’s see how fast I can cut this thing on and off.”
Mark started the sequence and just as before there was that BOOM! The FTL didn’t spool up, or if it did so it was faster than a human could observe with the senses. Instead it jumped right into full drive. But just as Mark heard the boom the timers cut the FTL. There had been no white light in front of the ship yet but the ship did lose power just as before. Instead of trying to reboot the main sequence Mark set his plan in motion to use the secondary systems. It took over the ship and timers were already set up. Without the computer having any data to work with the reverse thrusters went to full blast and would only be adjusted down as telemetry came in through the instruments.
Mark’s head looked all around the cockpit to see what he had and what he’d lost. Check, check, check. “Where am I? Come on, Anasazi, talk to me.”
The thrusters slowed and then cut. Then the thrusters from the other side of the ship did a short burn and cut. Mark looked over the instruments. Ok. “This is ok. Yeah.” He was in orbit around the star. He sighed with relief. So how far away was the deep space observatory?
“Well, that’s far.” Mark said even as he was getting the radio ready to talk to them.
“DSO. Anasazi, we have you on instruments. What is your status?” a voice called over the radio.
“Anasazi. DSO, we have mission success with some hiccups. The distance looks like I’m too far to get to you though.”
“DSO. Anasazi, I tell you, it sure is good you’re ok. Some of the guys over here were about to turn blue. You sit tight. We have your vector. It’ll take two days to get a ship to you but you’re within rescue range.”
“Anasazi. DSO, I am so glad to hear that. My life support is looking good. I have a small overheat on HT2.”
“DSO. Yeah, we see that Anasazi. There’s a mining ship that’s 12 hours away from you. We’re in communications with them now to go lend you a hand. Might be better to wait for us in a place where you can stretch your legs.”
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